Another Bad Weekend in Los Angeles as Jazz Fade Late

Kawhi’s strong fourth powered the Clippers to a come-from-behind win. (via espn.com)

The good news for the Utah Jazz is that they don’t play a basketball game in California next weekend. The Jazz remain undefeated in games played outside of the state of California and we can only hope the trend continues as the 76ers and Bucks come to town this week. Unfortunately, the Jazz remain totally defeated in games played inside the 31st state, adding an ugly 11-point loss to the Clippers to last weekend’s ugly loss to the Lakers and Friday’s loss to the Kings.

The big difference between last night’s loss and Wednesday night’s win against the Clippers was that Kawhi Leonard played although anybody who only watched the first 3 quarters might be surprised to know that. Through three quarters the Jazz had a 4-point lead and Leonard had only scored 12 points shooting on 4-for-15 shooting from the field and 0-for-4 from three. Of course, there are four quarters in a basketball game and the superstar forward awoke in the fourth, scoring 18 points including a pair of triples and a perfect 6-for-6 from the line.

While the Jazz defense remained true-to-form, the offense continued to struggle as did Mike Conley’s struggles since coming to Utah. But the real story of the night wasn’t Leonard’s 18 points in the fourth or the Clippers’ 40 in the period; it wasn’t Conley’s ongoing offensive issues. The real story of the game was the Clippers’ ability to rebound. As Kawhi is now famous for saying “board man gets paid.” The Clippers outrebounded the Jazz 54 to 36, including an 18-6 advantage on offensive rebounds. Overall, the Clippers were able to make 92 field goal attempts compared to the Jazz’s 78. It doesn’t matter if the defense holds the opposition to an anemic .391 from the field and .219 from 3 when the opponent gets to take 24 more shots at the basket.

Even in the first three quarters, when the Jazz found themselves ahead, the issues on the glass were apparent. If you give a team enough time and enough chances, they’re going to score. The Clippers quite simply had too many chances to score last night.

Stat of the Game

14. That’s how many more shot attempts the Clippers got than the Jazz. Even if the offense were clicking last night it’s hard to overcome letting an opponent get 14 more shots on the basket.

Lines of the Game

12 points, 3 assists on .357 eFG% – that’s Kawhi Leonard’s stat line when defended by Royce O’Neale last night per NBA’s advanced stat matchup tracking data. There’s a reason why Leonard didn’t look like he showed up until the fourth quarter and a lot of that reason is O’Neale.

8 points, 5 rebounds on .600 eFG% in 14 minutes played – that’s Tony Bradley’s stat line last night. Nothing super impressive but solid. Before last night Bradley had only played 76 NBA minutes in his career, all of them were in garbage time. The third year pro out of UNC acquitted himself well filling in for the injured Ed Davis in what was, for all intents and purposes, his NBA debut as a rotation player.

Decisive Moment

The Jazz got the game close after Donovan Mitchell hit two free throws to bring it to 90-91 in the 4th. A few seconds later JaMychal Green hit a pullup 3 to ignite an 8-0 run, the Jazz offense ground to a halt and the Clippers never looked back.

Highlight of the Game

Donovan Mitchell hangs and scores off the @utahjazz‘ quick passing! #TakeNote

: https://t.co/IzTN6Aj2La pic.twitter.com/Pu4qprAjqV

— NBA (@NBA) November 4, 2019

Notes

• Mitchell was excellent scoring 36 points on .619 eFG% with 4 rebounds and 6 assists.
• Conley’s struggles continued. He scored 8 points on .200 eFG% with 1 rebound and 1 assist.

Up Next

The Jazz get a brief two-game home stand this week against the elite of the Eastern Conference as the 76ers come to Salt Lake City on Wednesday and the Bucks will visit on Friday night. With Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Lopez Twins, Al Horford and Joel Embiid, the Jazz centers are going to be tested and the loss of Ed Davis is going to be felt.